We have a pretty good toolbox of implements to help with the task of mowing off the side of something, right? Some offset mower, be it a three-point flail or a boom mower or a sickle bar, or a trailblazer type loader Mount mower. An offset-type mower to reach over a pond bank or into tree lines. A really common application for a lot of people. It's a really common point of maintenance. While we've had a pretty long list of things that we can fit up to tractors, the list of things that you could put on a skid steer if that's the piece of equipment that you happen to have, are pretty limited, right? There's not a whole lot of way is to really get that offset reach. Baumlight here has a really unique piece that we have sold here locally.
This is the first one that's been through our dealership. While it's here, we're going to take a minute, walk you around this and show you a little bit of this skid steer mounted offset flail. [music] Implements like this are sometimes pretty challenging in order to work upon a skid steer simply because the machine doesn't have a whole lot of functions coming off of it in order to operate all the different cylinders and the motors and everything that might be needed in a complex implement.
If you look at what comes off the machine here, you have two different hydraulic lines. This has high flow on it in order to get that drum spinning good and fast. You have the fat coupler in its return line down here on the bottom. You'll also have a case drain line down here on the bottom. That's commonly found when you get into this high-performance, high-capacity hydraulic motors, particularly those that might be spun up the speed and then stopped abruptly. That case drain line allows that motor to overflow the oil back to sump where there's basically no pressure in order for it to flow back to. Also this yellow line right here is a 14 pin electrical connector that goes back down in here into this base unit where all the magic happens. Now in order to make this thing work, to fold this out, because obviously, we're not going to mow like this, you have two different hydraulic cylinders doing the work. There's an internal one back here inside the gray housing that's going to pivot this black piece around, and then this cylinder right here. That's going to take care of pivoting the mower itself. Now, once this is down, this is going to be the one that's used in order to make basically help you set your contour to match your roadside or the pond bank that you might be cutting around. The one down in here is mostly used simply to get this thing back down onto the ground again.
Now one thing that's a little unique in order to go through and make all of this work is that you have a single hydraulic feed coming off of your machine. There is a lever back here that allows you to turn the cutting head on and off. As soon as you have oil flowing through these lines, that cutter head is going to turn on. For safety's sake, you can reach back here, turn the cutter, head off when you fold the boom out so that you're not spinning that drum when you're just operating these hydraulic cylinders.
Now I'm sure this becomes a little natural over time, but for me to go and do this for the first time. It did take some playing around with the controls. The first thing I'm going to do is turn my machine on, hit my operate button, and engage my hydraulic. It will be a little bit different from one skid steer to the next one. I'm going to start running oil out that front hydraulic line. Now I can see that I'm doing that because there's a pressure gauge up here on the top of the unit. That's pointed back here towards the operator. Once I can see that I've got oil running through there, I operate my hydraulic function here.
It's going to take this arm and fold it down. Now in my Kubota here, that is function number seven and my 14 pin connector. Now you see my tilt cylinder. There is not moving. This is just the one that takes the arm over. Now once I'm over now I have another cylinder to operate in order to set my till. That brings the whole thing out to the side and sets it up. That is a nice amount of offset.
You think of a skid steer here as the counterbalance for that big arm. It's actually a pretty good fit for a machine like this. Your skid steers are generally seven to 11,000-pound machines, depending on if you've got tracks. That's a good counterweight for a mower like this. It's a cool application. Now, once I have that going, I'm going to open up my safety releases here and reach forward and turn on the cutting head.
Now when I start to run this, kick up some dust and you can see the knives spinning there. Generally, you're going to run that function just by turning the hydraulics on their constant flow setting. Just letting that thing go. Now, I do have a little bit of flow there, left that I can move this up and down and you see here when it goes up, the drum slows a little bit.
There's still enough back pressure therein that drum to be able to keep this thing in an angle. That's one thing I was watching here. If there wasn't enough back pressure, you wouldn't be able to make these adjustments. You'd have to stop the drum. It seems like they have the hydraulics balance pretty well that you're able to do that. They even got enough on this one too, to be able to lift all that weight.
Pretty slick. Now, as I rake this thing up, I'm going to bring those knives up to speed.
One thing I really like in applications like this, is when you have say skid steer rotary cutters for any of that stuff where you're running these hydraulic pumps. Is the implements that actually go and take the expense to put a pressure gauge on the implement here for the operator. It really gives you a good visual of the loading of the implement. If you get into really high grass or something, and this thing starts to slow down, you're going to be able to see that reflected in your pressure gauge and give you an idea of how the implement's performing when you can't necessarily have a great sightline out to it. If you have the radio on, you may not be able to hear exactly what it's doing. I think that's a nice addition to any hydraulic-powered skids, steer implement.
A couple of observations I would make out here in terms of how this thing is going to cut. You have a lot of adjustability here just by the nature of the fact that you're on a skid steer. Very easy to pick this thing up and down using your bucket curl circuit in order to rock the thing front or back. You have this wheel here on the front. This is going to be your scapping wheel, your guide wheel to pivot this thing down.
If I go through here and look through the one thing I'm not nuts about is the amount of distance between the knives and the ground. There's not a whole lot of adjustability here as far as height control. We know from the past of running other flail mowers like this, they tend to give their best quality cut when they're really close to the ground. You know, you can get almost a lawn-like finish out of a flail like this, but they tend to not work great at six and eight inches up in the air. Looking at the way that this thing is assembled and also saying it's on a skid steer, you're hanging it off the side, this is not probably that flail mower. Not something that you want to go out and groom a pasture with, but more for maintaining the side of roadsides where you're going to have stickier material and that kind of thing. A lot of heavier brush that you're really just trying to knockdown. I'd suspect it's going to do a fine job of the kinds of things that it's intended for, but you are probably going to be a little limited in just how close you can get this thing to the ground.
Another thing that's impressed me about Baumalight in the last several implements of theirs that I've sold. Has been the inclusion of extra teeth and stuff in the implement itself. The brush mulcher that we had here a couple of weeks ago, included some nice carbide teeth along with it. This one here has got some extra hammer knives underneath of this cover. The thing that's cool about including this stuff is that in implements like this, inevitably at some point, you're going to need these parts. You're going to hit a rock. You're going to hit a manhole cover as I have done before. You're going to end up needing those parts down the road. In an industry of really competitive pricing pressure, putting this stuff in is an extra expense in this implement that BaumaLight wouldn't necessarily have to put there. I appreciate their care for you, the customer, for those of us that know we're going to bang this stuff up. We're going to need these things eventually. It's an added cost in this implement and an added benefit to you.
When you bring this thing up if you keep the mower upright, when you come up the center and then bring this around, it comes down a lot more gently. I was finding earlier that by taking the mower, by bringing that over first and then run this function here, boom, I get a lot more slam down because the weight of the mower is hanging that far over. It just seems to come down a lot more gently if you bring the boom up first and then use the tilt function in order to take the mower over into its storage or transport position. This is a transport position. You're not going to store this mower like this.
When it comes off the skid steer coupler, it's going to fall over if you were to release it like this. Remember this thing is going to take up some significant space in storage. You can't collapse it like this to park it. This is really for transporting up and down the road so that you don't have this big mower hanging off the side of the machine.
